Microsoft services are beginning to be restored to customers across Europe after a global outage disrupted businesses and government agencies, leaving users unable to access workplace software in one of the company’s most significant technology failures in years.
In an update on the matter Microsoft said it was seeing “encouraging recovery progress in Europe”, with email “delivery performance improving across a growing portion” of its affected infrastructure.
Japan remains “more stable while North America is also improving”, it added.
The company said it would continue to deal with the issues with “urgency until full mitigation”.
RM Block
The disruption, which began on Thursday and continued into Friday, left users unable to send or receive emails through Outlook. It also affected Microsoft Teams, its Copilot AI assistant and other Microsoft 365 services.
Emails have begun to come through again, at least for some users. Microsoft Teams remained working for many businesses during the morning despite the outage.
Monitoring website Downdetector first showed a spike in users reporting problems with Microsoft Teams in Europe at about 6.15pm on Thursday.
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice-president of Copilot, Agents and Platform, said on X that there was no indication that the disruption was due to “malicious or cyber activity”.
In an update on Friday, the tech giant said that although it had managed to get servers operating multiple times overnight, those servers had crashed.
Microsoft said it had tried several solutions to mitigate the problems, including isolating parts of its infrastructure and shifting traffic to alternate routes.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” the company said.
[ HSE services affected as global Microsoft outage hits IrelandOpens in new window ]
As the disruption spread across the globe, businesses which rely on Microsoft’s technology reported that they were unable to carry out day-to-day operations and could not use critical communication tools.
Richemont, the Swiss luxury group that owns brands including Cartier and Chloé, was forced to delay its half-year results on Friday, while US electric-truck maker Workhorse Group postponed its quarterly results on Thursday.
OpenAI and Anthropic both also reported “errors” affecting Microsoft 365 connectors.
Government agencies in the US, Australia and Japan were hit, with Australian police and intelligence services among those affected.
Singapore authorities said the disruption affected some of its state systems, but added that emergency services were “fully operational”. Workers coming back from an extended Diwali holiday break in India also complained on social media about the Microsoft outage.
In Japan, the government and many major companies were affected by the outages. Deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki warned that the shared government IT infrastructure, which relies on Microsoft, was experiencing disruptions.
Several Japanese companies told the FT that their emails could be delayed due to issues with Microsoft Outlook. Logistics group Sagawa Express had to suspend same-day reservations for its luggage storage services at train stations and airports nationwide.
Local media reported that some banks and securities businesses were resorting to fax machines to confirm transactions. - Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026/PA
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